The Serena Six: 6 Serena Wilcox Mysteries; Angels Mark, Covert Coffee, Bluebird Flown, Project Scarecrow, Ruby Red, and Future Beyond

By Natalie Buske Thomas

Books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6! The first six full length books in the Serena Wilcox Mysteries: Angels Mark, Covert Coffee, Bluebird Flown, Project Scarecrow, Ruby Red, and Project Scarecrow

The future of the nation depends on former private detective Serena Wilcox and her unlikely crew. The Serena Wilcox books are quirky, suspenseful and unpredictable thrillers, with many plot twists and creative story lines about corrupt government and political nastiness. These are unusual books that don't fit neatly into any preconceived notion of what a mystery book should be. The Serena Six inspire independent thinking about contemporary themes surrounding politics, religion, science, and technology, and are suitable for YA through adult readers. Dry humor is sprinkled throughout the books, as well as plenty of geek candy and farce.

In "Angels Mark", Serena Wilcox and her family have destroyed their old home and faked their deaths to go off the grid under new identities, after obtaining insider information about a threat to the United States. The threat results in a geographically divided America, with two governing presidents: John Williams and Japanese-American Ann Kinji. Conspiracy, greed and a lust for power are at the root of this plot-twisting thriller about corrupt American government. Angels Mark features revolting and oddball characters, dry humor, and shocking dialog and events.

Books 4-6 beginning with Project Scarecrow take on an added dimension of time travel as an aid to Serena's investigations. Unusual plots, vivid characters, suspense, and corruption are at the heart of all six books.

Books 4-6 beginning with Project Scarecrow take on an added dimension of time travel as an aid to Serena's investigations. Unusual plots, vivid characters, suspense, and corruption are at the heart of all six books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Natalie Buske Thomas
• Release date: Nov 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310012303

Natalie Buske Thomas

Natalie Buske Thomas is the author of the Serena Wilcox Mysteries, the Dramatic Mom comic stories, Savannah's Inky Imagination and the Thriving in a Hateful World series. She is also an oil painter and entertainer. Her paintings have been in exhibits, galleries and on tour. Please view her website to see her list of titles, pictures of her paintings, life stuff on her blog, and more!

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Of The Serena Six

ANGELS MARK

1

She made X’s in her mashed potatoes with her fork, staring at her plate without really seeing the food. All around her was the clatter and the chatter of people dining in groups large and small, huddled under the stained glass domed lights that adorned the ceiling above each cozy table. She was conspicuously alone in a large mid-priced chain restaurant in a suburb just outside of Minneapolis.

Parents donned bibs on hungry toddlers. Some fawned all over Baby, some were embarrassed by Baby’s noisy demands, and the rest ignored Baby, despite glaring looks from nearby tables. Friends shared deep-fried appetizer platters, each group with an obvious identity: co-workers blowing off steam, girls’ night out, birthday party. Couples clicked sparkling wine glasses; most pretended to share intimacy while distracted by other things. A few couples shared a real moment, with some moments more fleeting than others. Children bounced through the aisles on their way to and from the restrooms, occasionally led by a parent.

Tables with booth seating, running along every wall and tucked into every corner, were fully occupied by smiling people. The remaining tables, with traditional seating, were scattered throughout the middle of the restaurant and wedged in wall spaces too small for the booths. That was where she was sitting, the third table from the kitchen doors, hugging the wall.

May I get you something? said Bryce, a local college student who had recently taken this job waiting tables three nights a week. His tuition was paid for by his parents, books were covered by paternal grandparents, and clothes were gifted by his maternal grandparents. Aunts and uncles pitched in dorm and food costs. He worked solely to sustain his partying habits, which were substantial.

Seemingly never hung-over, over-stressed, or fatigued, his ever-present smile showed a history of good orthodontics and tooth whitening. Bryce’s fresh good looks, topped with thick sandy locks, often netted him big tips from female diners -- but not from this one. This one didn’t even look at him.

Oh, no thanks, she said. Wait, actually, yes. I’d like the hot fudge sundae cake. With whipped cream, but no nuts, please. She raised the glossy dessert menu and tapped her finger on the picture of the Chocolate Lover’s Deluxe Fudge Sundae Cake special, complete with red cherry on top. The price was not special, but she wasn’t thinking about cost.

Sure, he said, his smile cranked up to full wattage. He turned away from her table quickly and merged into the swarm of patrons coming down the long carpeted aisle, his checkerboard-patterned shirt still visible until he reached the swinging kitchen doors. He should have collided with a female server, but somehow gracefully skated around her at the last possible second. The trays full of Buffalo wings she was balancing survived in defiance of all the laws of physics.

I probably made him feel uncomfortable, a woman sitting alone at a table large enough for six people. What on earth am I doing here? She sipped her soft drink slowly. How long could she make this evening stretch out? Eventually she would run out of room in her stomach. Then she would have to leave the warm restaurant with its pizzeria-like scent of garlic, and its competing craving-inducing smell of frying oil, its too-early Christmas music soundtrack competing cheerfully with the din, and its staff of people paid to be friendly. She would have to go home, except there wasn’t a home to go to.

She had taken care of that late last night when she lit a red glitter taper candle and then deliberately tipped it onto a stack of piano sheet music – a gentle tap of the candlestick holder and down it went, candle and all. The paper caught fire within seconds and she watched the edges of each page from the recital version of Let it Be curl, blacken, and smolder before crumpling and disappearing into the fire. Soon everything else on the coffee table was ablaze.

She stood there watching the flames for what felt like hours. After the fire consumed the sheet music, an L.L.Bean catalog, an old electric bill and most of a Grisham novel, it licked at the wood of the coffee table. She worried that the fire would exhaust itself before catching on to the table, but the flames eventually took root in its mahogany frame. From then on, the fire progressed slowly.

As hard as it was to be patient, she couldn’t hurry it along. She could only stand by helplessly, hoping that it would pick up power and speed, spreading itself until the whole room was engulfed. She waited; her feet hurting from standing so long, her bladder full, and her throat dry.

When the room finally began to fill with smoke, she went downstairs where her bags were packed and ready for her on her favorite chair. She slung the oversized backpack over her right shoulder, grabbed one bag with her left hand, and wheeled the third bag with her right hand. She waited a few more minutes, making sure the fire was spreading throughout the house.

She heard the thud of something falling in the kitchen and felt certain that the rest of the house would be gone within the next hour or so. She took one last look around, at the picture frames on the mantel: her daughters, her son, her husband. She set her bags down and opened one of the glass walk-out patio doors. She put a coat on, but didn’t take the time to zip the front. Then she grabbed her bags and left the house for the last time.

~~ ~~

Would you like a refill?  Bryce set the dessert in front of her and reached for her glass. The trapped body heat in the restaurant had already melted the leftover ice cubes in her nearly empty beverage.

Yes, please, she said. Why not?  She had nowhere to go. She was amazed that she could have any appetite at all, but she had gone for almost 48 hours without much to eat or drink. She craved comfort foods and sugar.

I’ll be right back, he said, disappearing again into the steady stream of Friday night diners, many of whom were now waiting in line to be seated. Dirty slush had been tracked in from their feet, puddling into a gray sludge on the carpet. The crowd was thickening now, and the empty chairs around her table had been added to adjoining tables after the perfunctory polite inquiry, Is this seat taken? She shook her head no after each request. Five requests later, she was sitting in the only chair left at the table.

She ate her dessert methodically. She removed the cherry and ate that first, returning the stem to her plate. Then she moved on to the sides and bottom. When the cake was nearly gone, she saved the biggest dollop of whipped cream to go down with the last bite of chocolate. She spent the next two minutes people-watching while draining the rest of her second soda.

When Bryce returned, she asked for coffee. He didn’t express any surprise, but surely by now he was starting to wonder when she would ever leave the restaurant, especially with tables in high demand. His restraint was motivated by pity, great customer service, or apathy – she didn’t know, but she felt blessed that he didn’t try to hurry her along on this starry Minnesota night.

She altered her coffee with two creams and five sugar packets, stirring the sweet slurry until it became the caramel color she was looking for. She held the orange cup with both of her cool hands wrapped around it and lifted the coffee to her face, letting the aromatic steam warm her. Nursing the coffee confection for ten minutes, she breathed in the comforting smell and allowed herself to remember a cup of coffee she had five years ago.

~~ ~~

Tom had been grinding coffee beans. The shrill whine from the high-decibel grinder masked all other sounds. After he shut the grinder off both of them were startled by the new sound breaking the silence: the phone was ringing, and was probably on its third or fourth ring. He glanced at the caller-ID screen and said, Ball State.

Again? she shrugged. Every weekend Ball State had been calling their alumni, presumably to raise funds for the university. She was relieved that the call was not one they needed to answer. She considered turning the phone’s ringer off, but focused her sleepy mind back on to coffee. Normally she didn’t have a cup of coffee so late in the day, but life was changing fast and a lot of things were going to be different.

Tom pushed the powdered creamer in her direction. She reached beyond him to open the silverware drawer and pulled out a spoon. She scooped sugar out of the counter canister, spilling some granules on the counter, adding more sugar to the crystallized ring around the canister. A few seconds later, she was sipping coffee that was brewed too strong for her. She added a spray of canned whipped cream. Tom took the whipped cream and added some to his coffee too.

Both stood in the kitchen, leaning into the cluttered and crumb-littered island counter, silently sipping coffee. The quiet was unnerving. Each of them expected the silence to be shattered at any moment, but the phone did not ring again.

The frigid air outside froze sound itself. Nothing was stirring. They looked at each other at the same time, and laughed softly, a laugh devoid of mirth. Laughter was nothing more to them at that moment than a nervous tic.

Tom drained the rest of his coffee and added his Real Men Do Diapers mug, a leftover from when they’d had babies in the house, to the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. He walked behind her and put his arms around her. She rested the back of her head on his shoulder. Her dark hair, naturally a nutmeg shade according to color charts, looked even darker next to Tom’s short blonde locks.

They were physical opposites in other ways too. He was long in the torso, short on legs. Serena was short in the torso, long on legs. Both were on the short end of the height scale though, and fit together as a cute couple, friendly and wholesome. Nice. Sexy and powerful were not adjectives assigned to the pair of them, but they felt that way when they were alone together, especially when life had them feeling on edge, either because little things were not going their way, or, like now, because things were completely unsettled.

Serena drank in Tom’s cologne and tried to quiet her energy, but she quickly grew restless with the embrace. Her back hurt from the slight pressure of Tom leaning on her. The feeling was mutual: Tom was antsy to pull away so that he could pace the kitchen. Each waited a polite moment before pulling away from each other simultaneously. This was how they were; married long enough to finish each other’s thoughts and move in synchronized steps without any words at all.

They’re saying something, said Tom. He ran into the living room, grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. They planted their stance a few feet away from the large TV. They were too keyed up to sit or move, their bodies trembling and their stomachs in knots. Blinking their eyes felt foreign, swallowing saliva was difficult over their thick dry throats, and their every breath felt labored.

They felt united with all of America, and with people from all over the world, as they all watched the events unfold on live television together – the shared passive observance of tragedy that would bind them all together forever, and would alter future generations with every passing second. This was that moment in time that they had all dreaded, that time in history that populations had feared for decades. It had arrived, and it was every bit as monumental as every clichéd movie Serena had ever seen, and it was punctuated by live reporting on television.

The news anchors’ faces would be etched in their collective brains as the faces everyone turned to for reassurance and information. New stars were born, as lesser-known reporters stepped up in stations outside of New York. The current face on the screen belonged to Brandon Swenson of Minneapolis.

We are hearing reports of a single blast from what we now know is a nuclear bomb that was a direct hit to New York City and we are just now, we are just now hearing, we are hearing that Washington D.C. has also been hit. The President is in an undisclosed location. The President has been confirmed to be safe. I repeat that, at this time, there has been no threat to the President.

We are now learning of another blast. There is another blast on Philadelphia. Yes, we are just now learning of another hit. The affected cities are now L.A., New York, Washington, D.C., and this just in, Philadelphia. We have yet to learn who is taking responsibility for these attacks. Where will it all end, America?

We are reporting live from our sister stations in Minneapolis and Chicago. I regret that many of our colleagues were in the affected cities at the time of the blast. This is a dark day for America, a very dark day.

Tom turned the closed captioning on and muted the sound. The reporters, and guest experts, were saying the same information in a desperate loop of nothing-new-to-report during the climax of the world’s worst crisis.

He turned the sound back on when the footage cut back to Brandon Swenson. Brandon looked way too young and inexperienced to handle this moment in history. The baby-faced reporter read frantically from the teleprompter, not bothering to conceal the emotion from his voice.

We are now expecting to hear from the President. He will be speaking from the James R. Thompson center in Chicago within the hour, where people are already gathering in the streets in unprecedented numbers. A strong police presence and secret service detail is already in place, and the Army National Guard has also been called in.

The President is requesting that Americans not panic. He is asking that people stay by their televisions and radios and wait for information. He is expected to announce a national registry to locate missing persons, and to reassure the American people that the United States of America is containing this crisis and will make our country safe again.

The President is likely to address the United States’ response to the attacks. It is unclear if the President will be taking questions at this time.

The two of them sat there, sunk into their respective lounge chairs, saying nothing for several long minutes. Tom muted the TV, but they continued to read the closed-captioning as it parroted the same information.

When Serena finally broke the silence, she and Tom entered a calm discussion as if nothing unusual was happening. They began rambling and musing, spinning conspiracy theories, as if retelling the plot of a favorite suspense movie. There was nothing about their conversation or demeanor to suggest that the nation was on the brink of World War III, Armageddon, or the end of the world as they knew it.

Each of them had an awareness of their behavior being completely off rhythm with the shocking events devastating the planet with each passing second, but neither could shake off their state of denial. So there they sat; the two of them as placid as if they were talking about the weather.

~~ ~~

A sudden shriek from a toddler at a neighboring table snapped Serena back to the present moment. She realized that she could not linger at the restaurant table a minute more. She couldn’t eat another bite, couldn’t drink another beverage. Besides, if she stayed any longer, her stalling would turn into loitering, drawing attention to her. It was time to leave this warm safe haven, with its comforting babble of people noise, and her personal server whose job it was to make small talk with her, and hit the road again.

She left a generous tip on the table- in cash, of course- donned her winter coat, and made her way toward the lobby, which was empty. Everyone was snuggled inside while she was headed outside.

Cheery pine swags and artificial holly bade her farewell, a basket of candy canes invited her to take a parting gift, and in the relative quiet of the lobby, Christmas music filled her ears. The thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, from yonder breaks a new and glorious morn…

CHAPTER 2

Of The Serena Six

ANGELS MARK

2

Near the exit door she stepped around the puddles of slush the best she could, but the cold and slippery tile had few clean patches left to step on. Opening the heavy door, the outside chill did not hit her right away. The time spent in the cozy restaurant had heated her body like a charcoal brick – each human body connecting and keeping each other warm. Her body retained this heat as she walked down the cleared sidewalk, admiring the twinkling lights of the holiday decorations.

When she reached the end of the walk and stepped into the shadows of the parking lot, she felt no comfort from the street lights. The charcoal glow that kept her warm as she walked down the sidewalk was already gone. She felt the frigid air settle deep into her winter coat, covering her with a blanket of cold. She regretted wearing the pants she had on, some type of nylon blend. The cold was easily passing through the fabric, chilling her legs to the point of numbness.

After unlocking the minivan’s doors with her electronic key, she paused to look up. Glorious stars sparkled brightly in the cold, cold, blue-black night sky. The moon shimmered. This, the way the sky looked, was the beauty that she associated with the frightening sensation of deep dense air in her lungs, making her every breath a struggle against the heavy cold air. Beauty and fear; hope and despair.

The van started up on the second attempt. She was lucky the thing still ran at all. It wasn’t much to look at: a 1997 white-with-rust Plymouth minivan with both rear hubcaps missing. There was a deepening crack in the windshield from when a rock had hit the glass.

Inside the minivan was not any better. The van had a malfunctioning electrical panel and every warning light on the dash blinked incessantly until after the engine had been running for about two minutes. After that, the dash lights magically went out. Tom had a mechanic look at it, but he couldn’t find anything wrong, so they learned to ignore the problem with the lights, forgetting all about it.

In addition to the panel malfunction, the passenger’s side window no longer went up or down. If Tom or Serena forgot to warn friends and family not to use the window, they would be forced to drive with the window open until they could safely stop. One person would then hold the close button while another person stood on the other side of the door, pressing firmly down on the window until the window started moving upward. This procedure often took several minutes.

These quirks she had learned to deal with, as long as the van still ran. But now she was worried. Why hadn’t they kept up with the maintenance issues, or pressed harder to get the electrical panel fixed? She would have a hard time buying another vehicle if this one failed, and she couldn’t risk interacting with a mechanic to fix the minivan if it failed, if it was even possible to resurrect it. All she could do was hope that the minivan would hold up for as long as she needed to use it.

Serena adjusted her seat as far forward as she could. She had forgotten to adjust the seat after Tom had driven the van, which made the twenty mile trip to the restaurant like driving a go-cart, her leg extended its full length to reach the gas pedal. Long gone was the little red car she had when she and Tom were first married. Now she shared the mini-van, or at least she did when life was normal.

She sat for a second or two and noticed that her breath formed a perfect cloud in the ice-box interior of the van. The heater was chugging away but she didn’t feel any comfort from it yet. She continued to obsess about the mini-van, and how the crack on the windshield looked slightly longer than it was the last time she studied it; scarcely feeling the cold steering wheel with her bare hands, until she remembered the fleece-lined driving gloves she had in her coat pocket.

She put her gloves on, slowly, concentrating on each finger as it went inside the gloves. Enough already! Pull yourself together and get out of here! She gripped the wheel with determination, put her foot on the pedal, now within a comfortable leg-reach from her body, and drove the van out of the restaurant parking lot.

There was no turning back. Farther and farther she drove, past suburban housing developments with their hundreds of tasteful white Christmas lights lining identical roofs on identical houses, past vacant department stores bearing illuminated icy parking lots, past gas stations with a surplus of frozen cut pine trees leaning against quick-stop stores, and past banks displaying the current outside temperature of -17, not including wind chill factor.

After a long stretch on the freeway the steady blur of traffic lights, holiday lights, street lights, and headlights tapered off. Serena slowed to the 30mph speed limit to meet up with the wreath-lined streets of the small town of Cannon Falls, Minnesota, which was a frequent pit-stop for truckers driving between the Twin Cities and Rochester. The town, with a population of around 4,000, had benefited from media attention after former United States President Obama selected Cannon Falls for a town hall meeting stop on his tour of the Midwest states. The presidential stop helped The Old Market Deli become a tourist attraction, due to its framed photographs of the former president ordering a Tom Turkey sandwich. To this day, the chair he sat in was marked with duct tape.

As she reached the only traffic light in the town, she stopped in front of a multicolored canopy of Christmas lights draped across the intersection. She studied the lights as she waited for the light to change. She could almost hear the crackling of ice crystals as the lights swayed. She tracked the rocking motion of the lights with her eyes, eyes dry and bloodshot from fatigue and the hot air from the minivan’s heater. She willed her eyes to stay open. She looked in the rearview mirror. Her green eyes had so much red around them that Serena thought, I have Christmas eyes. Oh no, I’m getting slap-happy. I need to snap out of it. I still have twenty miles left to go.

One second, two seconds, three seconds. There were no other vehicles around. It was tempting to ignore the red light, but she couldn’t risk a traffic violation, or the unlikely event that a car would come out of nowhere and zip through the intersection, colliding with her, so she waited for what felt like a long time but probably wasn’t. She surveyed the downtown area, noticing lights on behind one of the storefront windows: chiropractor Fletcher was tending to an emergency after-care patient who had been rear-ended in an auto accident an hour earlier. All other buildings were dark. Finally the light changed and she was on her way.

She drove past Cannon Falls’ post office and grocery store, which shared a common parking lot, and past its only public school complex; all grades K-12 were taught among the two brick buildings located at the edge of town, just inside city limits.

Earlier in the day the area was a hub of activity with teen drivers leaving school, parents picking up students, and orange-yellow buses lined up along the full length of the sidewalk. Now the area was deserted, lit only by security lights.

As the school faded away from view, she passed St. Ansgar’s Lutheran Church, a church that held both traditional and contemporary worship services, and served as an emergency shelter for the neighboring school district for emergencies that, post 9/11, included terrorist attacks and bomb threats. Serena idly wondered if the church had been full of school children on that horrible day that was the catalyst for everything else that happened.

St. Ansgar’s was the last sight of Cannon Falls -- and the last sign of civilization. After she drove by the outlying residential areas, and a few rural properties, nothing greeted her as she maneuvered the windy roads and icy bridges between Cannon Falls and Red Wing.

Tangled leaf-less trees, Halloween trees, filled the bluffs on both sides of the desolate road, not a home in sight -- nothing but the moonlight that bounced off the snow and provided an eerie violet-white glow that illuminated the darkness. Other than the moonlight, which was partially obscured by cloud cover coming in, it was pitch black, the kind of blackness that only the most rural areas are steeped in.

There were no other vehicles, except for one abandoned car in a ditch. The minivan’s headlights were the only artificial light source. Serena struggled to keep her eyelids from closing.

Exhaustion washed over her in waves of dizziness and her vision took on an altered-state quality. With no visible traffic lines on the road, she wasn’t sure if she was weaving all over the center line or if she was precariously hugging the edge. In some places, if she ran off the road, it would be a sharp dive off an elevated area and into a ravine. It was hard to tell what type of landscape lurked around each bend, over each hill, in the low-lying valleys in between.

She had been driving about ten miles and she was now way outside any easily known physical address. Some of the farm residents in this area had a Minneapolis area code, a Goodhue zip code, and belonged to the Cannon Falls school district. In other words, it was fairly easy for them to fall off the grid -- even the GPS found their existence difficult to locate -- which was why Serena was almost home.

A few more rotations of the minivan’s tires over the snow and ice covered gravel road, and she would be there. The driveway was long, and uphill, so she fretted that she would never get the van up the hill. She applied pressure to the accelerator pedal and heard nothing but the tell-tale squeal of tires that were spinning without traction. She blinked instant tears away. She was home now. No reason to break down.

A light went on in the house on top of the hill. She saw silhouettes moving in the windows: one, two, three, and a small fourth. Then a switch was turned on and dozens of evergreens, tall and short, lit up in red, green, gold, and white. The wintery hill was a Christmas wonderland welcoming her home.

That was when she lost it. Tears, nearly freezing upon impact, streamed down her cheeks. She sat there in the minivan at the bottom of the driveway, sobbing, her driving gloves still clutching the steering wheel, for what felt like ages. She’d lost all sense of the passage of time; she didn’t know if she sat there for two minutes, five, or ten.

After her meltdown subsided, she pulled herself together and backed into the road to give the minivan a running start to make it up the hill. Gravity got her past the slick spots – fast. Going down was easy.

It took her three attempts, but she finally made it up the driveway, and into the garage, where the door had already been opened for her. After she parked the minivan and switched off the engine, Serena dug for a tissue in her purse and hurriedly blew her nose while looking at herself in the pull-down visor mirror. She wasn’t going to win any pageants tonight, but it was hard to tell that she had been crying. Her face was already red from the cold, and her eyes were bloodshot from fatigue. Her meltdown was hardly noticeable – she was ready to reunite herself with her family.

~~ ~~

After Tom and the kids tackled her in a group hug, Tom said, I was about to go look for you. Why didn’t you call? It’s a disposable phone, and no one is looking for us anyway.

I misplaced the phone.

Tom laughed. He knew how often she misplaced things. I’m glad you’re home. He gave her a kiss on the forehead and pried Rebecca from her death grip around Serena’s waist. Let Mommy take her coat off.

Serena draped her slightly damp coat over a kitchen chair and all of them sat around the table. Carrie had made sugar cookies earlier that afternoon and Rebecca had decorated one especially for her, a heart shaped cookie with French vanilla frosting and red candy sprinkles. Tom had both wine and coffee on hand, not knowing which one she would want. Samuel had learned a new song on his guitar to play for her homecoming. Cookies, beverages and music were offered to her all at once. After the flurry of excitement died down, the kids went to bed while the adults lingered in the kitchen for a few minutes longer.

There they sat, knowing their actions were irreversible. Two days ago Tom had finished up his last day of work – not that his boss, or any of his co-workers, knew it was his last day. He made sure that he worked a regular full day, with nothing in his attitude showing what he was up to. Meanwhile, he had been making preparations for weeks. He sold personal items using anonymous online auctions, stockpiling all the cash he could. He thought it was very unlikely that anyone would look for them, or that anyone would look into their deaths very deeply. Still, he was careful.

He was fairly confident that the house fire would be ruled an accident without a second thought. He had made sure that the gasoline container was staged to look as if he had been working on repairing a broken snow blower and made the tragic mistake of using the mud room as a workshop. The mud room was attached to the living space of the house. If the fire spread as they imagined it would, it was only a matter of time before the house fire created by the fallen candle in the living room would spread to the mud room, igniting the open drum of gasoline. Their only concern was that the fire needed to reach the gas before someone noticed the fire and called 911. Some of their plans were entirely out of their control, but they had a good feeling it would all work out.

From the beginning of their adventure, when Serena had been up all night looking things up on the Internet, things had fallen neatly into place. It only took a single phrase typed into a search engine (Help me disappear) for Serena to find an underground society, known as the off-the-grid network. Next, she looked up the term off-the-grid, and found a reference for people who wanted to live independently of public utilities, go green, and have less dependency on government. But extremists going off-the-grid, or just off-grid, wanted to hide from the government; most likely for paranoid reasons, or to breed a militia clan. While the latter sounded scary, off-grid groups helped their members fall off the radar.

Serena posted a message to the off-grid forum, and within ten minutes heard back from a spokesperson from Off-grid-ghost, a grassroots organization which sounded like a human smuggling ring. Tom joined the group too, and by the end of the week, they’d both told their story. Off-grid-ghost immediately offered them a house where they could hide, an old farm house on a leftover slice of Minnesota farm land, completely obscured from the road. All they wanted in return was $10,000 cash and an agreement to keep their organization secret. Rent was to be paid through Off-grid-ghost: landlord and tenant were forbidden to know each other, although both were required to be members of the network.

The house was selected because records of the dwelling and property were from so long ago that no one would find them without knowing exactly what to look for, and maybe not even then. Archived paper records were often lost or destroyed from the perils of long term storage, and no one had bothered to go back far enough to digitize the records. Chances were good that there was no trace of this house existing, which qualified the location for endorsement by Off-grid-ghost, said their spokesman.

So far, everything was going according to plan, but Tom and Serena were both nervous about falling in with a radical organization like Off-grid-ghost. Yet what choice did they have if they didn’t know how to disappear on their own?

It was only because they were computer savvy that they were able to learn about the underground off-the-grid network; and that was where their escape-plotting skills ended. They had no current passports and there wasn’t enough time to obtain them. They didn’t know what else to do, so they turned to what was, in their minds, a whack-job fringe group to help them hide. Tom and Serena considered themselves to be normal people, who just happened to find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. How could they explain their actions in a way that would not make them look crazy?

The off-grid plan was the only plan they had, so they had to trust that it would work. They weren’t even sure what to wish for: was it better if nothing bad happened, and they messed up their lives for no reason? Or was it better to be right, and not crazy? How could it be that two college educated people from suburbia would be so paranoid as to stage their deaths so that they could hide from their own government, dragging their three children with them?

They could analyze this over and over, but in the end they had only two choices: ignore the warning they believed to be true, or comply with what the government wanted. Always people of action when they believed in something, they felt they had no other option. So even though they knew very little about Minnesota, they committed to the plan right away. It was a place to hide. Hide and wait to see what would happen.

CHAPTER 3

Of The Serena Six

ANGELS MARK

3

Paul greeted General Gustavo Marino with a hearty handshake. Gustavo accepted the gesture, but kept his eyes focused on the back of President John William’s gray head, which was fast slipping away to the end of Gustavo’s imaginary leash. Gustavo ended the handshake quickly, and then moved forward in the procession, without ever really looking at Paul. Paul mentally shrugged his shoulders – it wasn’t important to his plan to be seen.

As Paul fell back from the entourage and let the media pass him by, he watched the President’s well-tailored pin-stripe suit disappear into the crowd on the tarmac. He kept up as best he could from a distance, but he hoped he could close the gap before the President got on the plane. He wanted a closer look at the man who was the President of the Liberty Union, which was comprised of the East Coast states (the ones still inhabitable anyway), the Southern states, and much of the eastern Midwest, a union otherwise known as The Free States.

Paul caught a break when President John Williams agreed to answer questions from a handful of reporters. Everyone knew that what this really meant was that Williams had a speech prepared, probably a long-winded one. Paul settled into a comfortable standing posture. While his view was mostly obstructed by the crowd and the mob of security detail around Williams, Paul would have plenty of time to study the man, while he himself went completely unnoticed. He turned on his cell phone to start recording. He planned to show the footage to Clyde later that night.

A surfer-boy aide with a perfect smile set up a portable podium right there on the tarmac and donned it with a fabric covering depicting the Liberty Union seal. Before the aide had given the final straightening tug on the fabric, President Williams placed himself in a rehearsed photogenic position behind the podium. He catered to the crowd for a few minutes before rattling off a speech that would make the speech writer, unknown to anyone until now, an instant celebrity.

Throughout history, our Constitution, the Constitution of the United States of America, has been rewritten. But if you’re like me, you never thought that the Constitution would ever really change again. But we should have paid better attention in our history classes because, if we had, then we’d have known that the Constitution was built to be fluid.

Anyone hear of a little thing called the Bill of Rights, which added 10 amendments? You might not remember that the Bill of Rights was added eighteen months after the Constitution was drafted. From 1789 to 1992, the Constitution was amended 27 times!

And, through judicial review, the meaning of parts of the Constitution has been changed many times. But I bet you didn’t know this: There’s a magical Article that could change the Constitution completely, Article 5, which notes the concept of the Amendment Convention.

What’s that, you say? Well, no one really knows. It’s not been used. The power or limits of such a convention are unknown because there has never been a time in history, except for now of course, in which this article was utilized. Scholars tell me, though, that a Convention would be able to propose any change to the Constitution it decided to, including full replacement. Did you hear that? FULL REPLACEMENT! I bet you never knew that. I sure didn’t.

So obviously, that’s where we are today. That’s how the former United States radically changed the Constitution and our government. That’s how we ended up with President Kinji on the West and yours truly as President of the East, and states in between naturally. Some say that our great nation has been hacked, sawed in two, and destroyed. If you believe the late night talk show hosts, we’ve become like Oz, with witches of the East and West, and everyone waiting for Dorothy to deliver the broomstick.

But we’ve got to stop thinking that way! We are the same great nation under God. We are! We are merely exercising our right to tap into Article 5. We did this within the Constitution, as laid out to us by our forefathers. We are not divided! We are united in our history. We are united in our memories of an early America.

You don’t believe that America has ever wanted change? We have precedent, you know. There have been many proposals for substantial change to the Constitution throughout history. Thomas Jefferson himself was wary of the power of the dead over the living, something that would happen if we had an unchanging Constitution. Without giving you too much of a history lesson, let me say this: To guarantee that each generation has a say in the framework of the government, Jefferson proposed that the Constitution, and each one following it, would expire after 19 or 20 years. Expire!

Jefferson advised that we retool, we update, we re-evaluate, we re-organize. Jefferson knew that life is about changing. America would change; and the government needed to change along with it. The people needed to have the freedom to change our government. Jefferson said this! Long before the Big War!

Let’s stay in early American history for a while. In 1932, William Kay Wallace, a U.S. diplomat, proposed not only changing the Constitution, but replacing it! He would replace the states with nine geographically-based entities, each with an equal representation in a national Board of Directors. A President would be chosen from the Board; the new states would have similar systems. Sound familiar?

Back in 1932 we were talking about changing things up, governing ourselves differently; even dividing the states up into groups. What’s so new about what’s going on today? What’s so new about the concept of two Presidents? Nothing! Turns out, it’s not such a new idea after all. Someone thought of it way back in 1932.

Let’s move ahead to the World War 11 era, specifically 1942. Henry Hazlitt, a conservative journalist, wrote that the time of the War was a perfect time to contemplate changing the Constitution; and that the War was pointing out several of the Constitution's weaknesses. Alexander Hehmeyer, who wrote a book in 1943, also thought that the war period was a perfect time to institute change, when people were in crisis mode. War time? Crisis mode? Sound familiar?

History repeats itself. We aren’t doing anything new here! We are the same America! We are responding to the times, just like we’ve always done.

Which brings us to Thomas Finletter, a special assistant to the Secretary of State, who authored a book published in 1945: He proposed to allow the President to dissolve Congress and the Presidency. You see where I’m going with this?

We Americans have thought about shaking things up way before now. We are the creators here, the innovators, the movers and shakers. We are the Super Power. We did not crumble, we were not ‘divided and conquered’ as some have said. We simply pioneered a new trail; a trail that many of us have thought was a long time in coming. A trail that Jefferson envisioned from the very beginning!

Think this is all ancient history? Let’s move ahead now to 1974. Rexford Tugwell, an economist who worked with FDR, suggested we have two Vice-Presidents instead of just one. Hey, we did that! We have two Vice-Presidents. Sure, we threw in an extra President too, but you see what I’m saying. We Americans have been mulling over making changes for years! Big ones! From our forefathers up until contemporary times!

This is not new, people. We are not brought to reform against our will. We walk willingly forward, boldly! The terrorists did not do this to us. We have the power here. We have the voice. We have the freedom to choose.

Let’s move forward again in time. After Watergate, there were many calls for changes in the Constitution. That should surprise no one.

But let’s skip ahead to even more contemporary times. Arthur Miller, law professor at George Washington University, wrote a book published in 1987, that called for, among other things, the redrawing of state lines. Redrawing of state lines! Re-structuring! See? We have done nothing new here. We have had these ideas in early history, and we’ve had them as recently as 1987.

Now we’re getting close to present day, and we can’t really talk about voices of reform without focusing on the Internet. Wow, do we ever have the freedom to voice who we are as Americans, and what we want. So what were people saying, in the years, months, weeks, and yes, even days before the Big War?

‘The U.S. Constitution for 21st Century’ web site had posted this quote: ‘Unique, innovative, venerable in its time, our more than 200-year old Constitution now has become antiquated and obsolete — even detrimental and dangerous — for the nation.’ Now does that sound like an America that doesn’t want change? This is but a tiny sample of what the American people were saying about our Constitution right up to the day we forever changed as a nation. The day we became ‘divided’ as some have called it – is that the right way to look at it?

Are we ‘divided’? No! If you’ve paid attention, and I thank you for your patience, then you know I’m leading up to this: We are still the United States of America, one nation, under God. We are. We are whole. We are together. We are one. We have restructured. We have listened to the call for change. That’s all. We are still America. And to that end: God Bless America!

John Williams gave a flourishing salute to presumably all Americans, and waited for the predictable cheers. William, who was last year a little-known but long-time senator, was now one of the most famous faces in the world, as the first President the New Conservative Party, which some had characterized as nothing more than a revamped version of the disbanded Republican Party. Conversely, the Democratic Union was often characterized as old guard Dems, even though President Kinji described herself as an Independent.

President Ann Kinji held the honor of being both the first female president, and the first Japanese-American president, of the Democratic Union. Kinji, who had been a Presidential cabinet appointee during the years leading up to World War III, was, not surprisingly, a well-known force in the then Democratic Party. The party system had been abolished post WWIII, but nonetheless, Kinji’s cabinet, and all of her supporters, had been dubbed The New Liberals.  Many Americans, Paul included, believed that the two party system had never died, but lived on under new labels.

The split of the United States of America was the result of six months of emotional deliberation without a single recess, and was, in the end, swiftly agreed to with very little opposition, with no one but the media allowed in. Every American could watch history play out on their televisions, computers, phones, hand-held gadgets, and even large screens on metro buildings. But watching from afar was not good enough for Paul. Whenever he could be there in person, he was.

~~ ~~

He was in the crowd in Chicago when the last President of the United States, the real President, shocked the world with words that still rang in Paul’s head. That famous speech, the transcript, and excerpts, now re-printed on everything from posters to blankets, was in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric he’d just heard Williams spew. No, the most famous speech in the world was full of real heartbreak, real grief, real tears. It was worthy to be listed alongside any speech of Abraham Lincoln’s. It was a speech in which no one took a breath, straining to hear every incredible syllable. For generations to come, people would recall where their ancestors were when they heard this speech:

Emergency times call for emergency measures. The needs of the East and the West are diverse. We have eight U.S. governors in a perpetual state of emergency, while five states are unsafe to reside in, and three states are completely gone. This is not the time for politics or party lines. We need to remove all obstacles. This must be a working government, running not on principles and ideas, but we must instead be as foremen leading re-construction.

For the good of the country, I will step down as President of the United States, after appointing not one, but two, Presidents to govern over this beloved nation. It will take all of us working together to rewrite our Constitutional laws, and to pass all the necessary bills to make this happen, but I know we can do it. We must do it. We must come together to create a new, more efficient, way to govern. Our nation has changed.

We are a nation in crisis, unparalleled to anything the world has seen. We need an emergency response, a response that will streamline government. We will face difficulties beyond what our forefathers ever imagined. We must find a way to get closer to the people, to get smaller, to delegate the workload of rebuilding our nation.

I believe in this plan. I believe that our nation is best served by two Presidents, and by both parties, in a shared system of government that divides the nation into two equal parts. With your blessing, I will appoint two people to serve for a period of 18 months. But I assure you, elections will be held swiftly, to replace my appointees with the choice of the people.

The two Presidents shall work together, but will govern separately, much the way our individual states have always been served by Governors. This is not the death of America, but an emergency response to emergency conditions. We shall forever in our hearts be one nation under God, and though divided by governing bodies, still indivisible in spirit. With liberty and justice for all, may we one day soon be a prosperous nation once again, whose citizens live without fear, and whose children know peace. God bless America.

~~ ~~

Paul would never forget that speech, and he felt that President John Williams missed the mark entirely with his own attempt at making a speech for the history books. Williams could never match the passion or talent for oration that the former president had, even though Williams was pompous enough to try, and obviously thought of himself as an equal or, Paul sneered, even the better man. No, Williams was the inferior man in Paul’s eyes, in polish, strength, and cleverness.

But when it came to honest conviction, Paul suspected that John might actually believe a little more of what he was saying, a little more. Williams was a dangerous hothead though, and Paul knew that he was better off working a different angle to get himself onto Capitol Hill, the new Capitol Hill. No matter, the doors were flung wide open for Paul, most unexpectedly. He had been waiting all his life for such an opportunity to come knocking, and here it was, an opportunity he created for himself.

From this moment on, the gap between himself and the heels of all the government insiders was shrinking. Paul, with his pretty-boy good looks, was an easy fit for the political scene. He was already well on his way to being an insider. All he needed was the right door to open, and he had found one. What he never expected was for his chosen doorkeeper to be tapped to be one of the first Presidents of the newly divided, formerly known as, United States of America.

CHAPTER 4

Of The Serena Six

ANGELS MARK

4

President Ann Kinji tucked her smooth shiny locks behind her ears. Her beautiful hair, cut in a bob, was the envy of middle class American women. Salons received many requests for what became known as The Kinji: a smart sleek bob, which often included coloring the hair to match Kinji’s onyx shade. The woman who was now an international icon was little-known prior to the Big War. It was crazy to go from obscurity to having a hair style named after her.

Beyond lack of celebrity status, Kinji’s work for the previous administration, the last administration of what was once The United States of America, had done little to prepare her. Of course, how could anyone prepare to be one of the first Presidents of the nation now referred to as The States of America? Everything’s pretty much the same – just add a second president -- and life moves on. And if you believe that, I have some nuclear wasteland to sell you.

Kinji snapped herself out of her brooding and studied her desk. It was tidy, that was for sure. She had so many assistants fussing over it that there wasn’t a thing out of place. There were no personal items on it yet, not a single framed picture or even a coffee mug. Kinji couldn’t bring herself to move in. It didn’t feel real, and she wasn’t sure if she was living a dream or a nightmare. She was insane if she wanted this responsibility, this crushing burden of being a pioneer in a newly divided nation. And the first female President besides? And Japanese? Well, the days ahead were going to be interesting.

President Kinji? Breyana Robertson, a strawberry blonde 20-something in a purple pants suit, rapped gently at her open door.

Yes? Kinji locked eyes with Breyana. It was trademark Kinji: unflinching directness that intimidated most people, but Breyana was a confident young woman and returned Kinji’s gaze unwaveringly. Breyana had nothing but open admiration, respect, and hopeful aspiration to friendship.

Paul Tracy is here to see you.

Oh yes, send him in, please.

Paul waltzed into the room as if his steps had been choreographed, and as often as he’d played this moment in his head, they were. President Kinji, you look so natural in this office, in front of that seal.

The Democratic Union seal depicted an eagle with an olive branch in its beak. The eagle was tinted a pale blue. The Liberty Union seal, behind President John William’s desk, was identical in design, with the only difference being the color tint of the eagle, a reddish pink hue.

Thank you, Paul. We’ve both put on a lot of mileage since the Warsaw days, good old Warren Academy. I hear you are going places yourself.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen you. You’ve heard right: I’ve been hitting the pavement to get those bills signed. I’m proud to claim my contribution to the New Liberals.

Democratic Union. Let’s drop the polarizing label.

Democratic Union, then.

Is there something you want, Paul? I am due for a press conference in five minutes.

I would like a position in your cabinet.

Kinji laughed. Finally, somebody around here who lays it on the table.

You know me, Ann. Paul stared into her dark eyes, leaning forward with both of his palms on her desk.

President Kinji. Sorry, Paul, I don’t do casual. No friends, no favors. If I consider this, it will be based on what you can do for my administration, period.

Paul backed away, holding his hands up. Fair enough, Madam President. I left a package with Miss Robertson that I think will interest you. When you see what I have to offer, I’m sure I’ll be hearing from you.

~~ ~~

Clyde was rugged without the handsome: oily reddish-grey hair that was sparse on top of his head, but long and stringy everywhere else; eyes set too far apart, giving him a wall-eyed look; a pitted face with a nose that snorted a long draw of mucus every few minutes.

Morning! he bellowed, in a deep voice that begged to be cleared of phlegm.

The sanctuary returned the greeting with a deadpan chant-like chorus of Morning.

You don’t get Internet, and you get limited TV – just what the old rabbit ears pick up. You rely on us to keep you informed. That’s why it’s so important that all of you be here. Now I’ll turn it over to Paul Tracy.

Paul was a man of frat-boy good looks. He was tall and lean, with thick wavy brown hair and perfect teeth – a refreshing contrast from Clyde. People were always surprised when they learned that the two men were brothers.

Thank you for your faithfulness, and a warm welcome to the newcomers. Consider this your welcome wagon. You got your packet, and should have your new names. Paul paused while the tell-tale rustle of papers indicated that people were opening their envelopes to look.

Serena turned to Tom, Only our last names, right? We figured that we would have to. We don’t have to change our first names too, do we?

Tom opened the packet. They strongly suggested we change our names completely, but agreed to let us do only our last names.

"Good! What is our new last name?

Meadows.

Meadows?

You like it?

I guess so. Did you pick it, or did he?

He had a list. I thought it was the best one.

Okay, I don’t care. We’ll get used to it.

Right, that’s what I thought.

What else did he say?

We can’t communicate with people who knew us when we were the Bridge family. I said okay, but I know we’re not going to let our family and friends think we’re dead forever.

What does it matter, now that Mom is gone?

Tom looked at her with his most sincere expression of sympathy and squeezed her hand. She’s not the only person who cared about you.

Serena didn’t answer. The grief was only six months old. She was still struggling to hold herself together. Being her mother’s caretaker had given her too many intimate moments with her. It would take time to heal, which was what she told herself whenever she felt like the rain would fall forever.

As soon as things happen, we’ll contact everybody, but in the meantime, I think we should do whatever the off-grid people want us to do.

Exactly, I agree. What if we did all this and there was no reason to do it, and we’re stuck in hiding because we burnt down our own house? How many laws have we broken now? I feel like such a criminal.

I don’t think anything else was illegal, just the arson.

Tom and Serena stared at each other and laughed at the absurdity, and the shock from a word like arson being owned by either of them.

You should be used to it. You had to have straddled some legal lines when I met you, said Tom.

Serena Wilcox, private detective? It’s been so long since I’ve been that person. I’m Serena Bridges now. No, I take that back. Serena Meadows. Serena looked like she had tasted something sour.

Maybe it’s time you found her again.

My ‘mom’ and ‘wife’ self doesn’t measure up?

I just mean we could use a detective. We didn’t learn much about this Paul guy, except that he’s operating out of Minneapolis. He studied his wife’s face and added, Getting your old spunk back wouldn’t hurt.

The crowd settled down and they directed their eyes obediently toward the pulpit, where Paul was gearing up for a sermon. His voice was smooth and steady, hypnotic in delivery. His eyes locked personally into each and every pair of eyes staring back at him. His audience was as captive as a warren of rabbits listening to a coyote sounding off in the distance.

They say we need the Identity Chip. What is this chip but a high-tech horror? It was the first thing I thought of when there was talk about inserting tracking chips under babies’ skin so that we can solve our missing children problems. Everyone would be assigned a unique computer code – a number. You get it on the forehead or the hand. It assigns you a number, a number! Doesn’t that sound familiar? Isn’t that just like the Bible foretold would happen? Is this not the number of The Beast?

The chip is like a bar code. Everyone’s ID will be on it, including bank routing info. No more credit cards, cash, etc. All is instant transfer. Everything digital, no need for hardcopy IDs, no more checkbooks or credit cards – just scan the forehead or back of hand. They are already doing it. Remember that